Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi

Protest Politics and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 1960-1965

James P. Marshall

Publication Year: 2013

In 1960, Mississippi society still drew a sharp line between its African American and white communities. In the 1890s, the state had created a repressive racial system that ensured white supremacy by legally segregating black residents and removing their basic citizenship and voting rights. Over the ensuing decades, white residents suppressed African Americans who dared challenge that system with an array of violence, terror, and murder. In 1960, students supporting civil rights moved into Mississippi and challenged this repressive racial order by encouraging African Americans to reassert the rights guaranteed them under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The ensuing social upheaval changed the state forever.
In Student Activism and Civil Rights in Mississippi, James P. Marshall, a former civil rights activist, tells the complete story of the quest for civil rights in Mississippi. Using a voluminous array of sources as well as his own memories, Marshall weaves together an astonishing account of student protestors and local activists who risked their lives for equality, standing between southern resistance and federal inaction. Their efforts, and the horrific violence inflicted on them, helped push many non-southerners and the federal government into action, culminating in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act—measures that destroyed legalized segregation and disfranchisement. Ultimately, Marshall contends, student activism in Mississippi helped forge a consensus by reminding the American public of its forgotten promises and by educating the nation that African Americans in the South deserved to live as free and equal citizens.

Cover, Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Foreword

James Marshall undertook this study in the 1960s, when he was a Yale
undergraduate and I taught American history there.
I had been a teacher at Spelman College in Atlanta from 1961 to 1964
and, no doubt because of this experience...

Acknowledgments

My acknowledgments have grown over the years as this project moved
from Yale College and Law School, to the civil rights organizations
SNCC and CORE, to the American Studies and History programs at
the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv...

Cities and Towns in Mississippi, by County

Abbreviations

Introduction

My objective is to trace the development of student support of the
civil rights movement in Mississippi from 1960 to 1965, along with
the growth of protest, parallel politics, and the resultant parallel political
organizations. White...

1. The Incipient Movement

The dilemma for Mississippi African Americans was whether to remain
in “their place” and accept their lot or to leave that position and seek
those constitutional rights denied to them by Mississippi’s closed society.
If they chose...

2. The Decision to Go into Voter Registration

The decision to go into voter registration work in Mississippi was the
result of an internal debate within the student movement. Intermittent
discussions lasted throughout the summer of 1961 and failed to convince
all workers of the correct...

3. Warming Up Mississippi: The Movement Becomes a Local Thing

In the winter of 1961–62, Jackson, Mississippi, was a busy planning center for
the spring and summer of 1962, and the Mississippi Free Press began to appear
there.1 The movement saw the necessity of forming a battle plan for the
coming...

4. Commitment Aborted

The Mississippi movement’s decision to work on voter registration
was influenced by both the federal government and the foundation
world. By early 1963 the early fears of the direct action group that the
movement was being...

5. The Stalemated Movement

We have seen that the near-fatal shooting of Jimmy Travis on February
28, 1963, drew voter registration workers from all of the civil
rights groups in the state to Greenwood in early March in order
to launch a frontal attack...

6. The Birth of Protest Politics

Met everywhere with apparent failure in its efforts to register Mississippi
African Americans, the movement began to think in terms of
a new strategy to soften up the closed society. Direct action protests
and voter registration...

7. Freedom Summer, Part I

The Mississippi Summer Project operated on two levels. On the one hand
there were programs aimed at the immediate problems within the state,
and on the other there were programs that represented an attempt to
dramatize those problems...

8. Freedom Summer, Part II: Freedom Schools and Community Centers

Douglass’s words, although written in 1845, penetrate to the heart of the
modern “slavery” endured by Mississippi African Americans, a slavery
of ignorance.1 Throughout the early years of the student-supported
civil rights...

9. The Political Organization of Protest Politics, Part I

The other programs created within the framework of the Summer Project
of 1964 were those which focused on the creation of the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in early 1964, as well as such
offshoots as the Mississippi Freedom...

10. The Political Organization of Protest Politics, Part II: The Second Freedom Vote and the Breakup of COFO

The second Freedom Vote was in many ways different from the first. Outwardly,
they were both protest, parallel elections held to demonstrate
to the nation that Mississippi African Americans would vote if given
the opportunity...

Conclusions

By 1965 the movement’s fight seemed to be the nation’s. This condition
passed quickly, however, as the country and the student-supported
movement became caught up in the controversy over the meaning of
Black...

Afterword

Appendix: The Power of Protection: The Federal Government

For those who were in Mississippi with the civil rights movement, or for
those who were African American Mississippians and ventured from
“their place,” the paramount question in their minds was survival. It was
not a question...

Notes on Sources

Initially I answered the question of how and in what manner the civil rights
movement developed in Mississippi by reading sources that gave only the
general outlines of events. The problem I had to confront was that much of
the material...

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